More green things...

So you want to know what I'm doing?

We've been trying to cut corners everywhere on our spending. It's not really an economics thing as much as it is that I just hate to spend money, period (not comma!). So we turned off our greenhouse lights and moved the seedlings outside. We turn off all lights we aren't using and try to not turn them on until they are necessary at night. We only drive into town 3 times a week (sometimes 4 if HOH drives alone on Wednesday) and we count it a blessing to be home most of the time. So really, I am a stay at home mom.

A necessary change for HOHs sake is that I do laundry promptly as it comes out of the dryer instead of piling it up until we have enough that justifies sitting down and sorting it all out. I guess you can say that I like to sort things and count things. It's genetic.

My dad and I used to take turns doing dishes (we were the dishwasher). Whenever we'd go to put them away, it was a counting game. Were there 16 juice glasses? What about the 1 stainless steel cup? Are all the forks in the right place? OK maybe it wasn't a game but an obsession or compulsion. Is there a disorder that reflects the need to find just the right word to describe something?

Back to the laundry. We've been known to have weeks worth of laundry piled up in our room when company comes over! HOH hates it. In effort to submit to his leadership, I have taken it upon myself to master laundry. Every day I've been checking to see if a load needs to be run. If there is, I start it then head to the dryer because chances are there is a load stashed there waiting to be folded. Stacking laundry on the dryer is OK because HOH can quickly distribute it to the appropriate location and expect it to get put away. So that's where folded laundry goes. When I get around to it (please don't send me a round to-it!), I might even put things away.

All this laundry modification has been great, except I've noticed how long and often the dryer is running! AAAAK. Certainly that's where our power bill has gone through the roof (up by nearly 33% in the past year!). So, I'm going green. Being the geek that I am and impatient as I can be, I didn't ask for HOHs help in stringing up the line, I just did it. Today we bought pulleys and what not to attach it to my porch so I don't have to go down stairs, but that's a project for another day. This weekend I dried three loads of laundry on the line. This is a picture of the last load on the line today!


HOH says that I don't have time for it to dry before nightfall. I don't mind. It can dry for the next hour or so before sundown and I'll finish it off in the dryer. Saving some must be better than none, right?

BTW (By the way), I learned to do laundry from Dad, too. He would dutifully wash and dry it on the weekend while Mom was out of town at a craft show. To him, he was helping. In her opinion, it was all wasted effort, because she still had to fold it.

Are you green with envy? What are your laundry woes? Does your HOH insist you fold his unmentionables? For 12 years I've been folding them because I thought HOH wanted it that way (leftover Marine Corps bent). Just today I checked to see his opinion. Wow, I don't have to fold them any more! Yeah.

So, am I going green? Probably but not with envy.

Just what exactly is a green toilet?

Everything is going "green", but I still have no idea. But, I do now know what it takes to repair a "won't quit running" toilet! It was a $7 kit from Low*'s. So for my dad's birthday, I bought the necessary kit and went to work. Now for those of you who know me, you know this is right up my alley! I'd share a list of skills I've acquired, but that would be boring. The toilet repair job didn't go perfectly either! I only report the good results. How's that for fair handed reporting! This is my blog, and I'll share if I want to, share if I want to...

What would be fun is if I tell you what I discovered while I wasn't at FPEA. A blog that I found through Math on the Level is found here.The author creates and sells PDF files to be used to print index cards for your homeschool and it also contains documents that tell you how to use the index cards to do everything from teach the material to play games and review the material. It encouraged me to create things daily for my first year registered homeschooler (I'd call him a kindergartner, but he's about to turn 6 and it just doesn't make sense to call him a first grader either!).

I'm also waiting for my copy of "26 Phonics Games Kids Can't Resist". L will make the games for M and in the process review/learn phonics I never knew how to teach him. Since I mentioned it, Math on the Level is a complete math program for beginning math lessons through pre-algebra. They describe it much better, but you have all the teacher's materials required bound in several volumes and organized by skill type. You are given all you need to teach your 4 yo how to count coins and your pre-teen how to add up the value of the coins said 4 yo counts all on the same page. Besides all that concise instruction information they include a really cool way to keep track of your child's math progress. It will be what I use to track all the manipulative activities I am planning to use this year!

Last year we studied Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. This year we will study the human body using the Usborne Science Encyclopedia as a stepping off point for a year of research and report writing using the IEW method of teaching writing. But that's not a new discovery. What I did learn as a I tried to search for human body science focused literature (not for specific research but to enjoy reading as we research) is that we have living math books but every time you google science and human body and throw in literature for good measure, everything comes up experiments and texts but no real literature. I hope that by posting you'll add comments that might give me good ideas of what we can read as we do all that human body research!

So, I probably summed up my weekend of research in this one blog and Princess is going to spend all week raving over what she learned. I'm glad. It wouldn't have been good for me to leave HOH with the boys while I played on our anniversary weekend.

The final note: did you notice that I use links to significant pages spread throughout my post? I like to do that. It points you to other sites that are way more informative than mine. Do you like it?